Chapter 30 - Crushed Hopes (CitC)
Tubba shuddered. The rage he had felt had been ten years removed from him. The death of his father had sent him on a spree where he didn't care about consequences or the greater cause. It didn't take much to set him off. Bubba came to his mind. Years of bullying ended with the death of both Tubba Sr. and Bubba. He recalled killing Uarn the Iglator in a few minutes because he refused to bow. Gwu the Koopa because Tubba just disliked who she was. Gerald because he disliked "Tubba!" Gonzales cried again, "we're losing the ship!" Tubba immediately rose to his feet, leaving the mutilated body of Beanum on the floor. Blood was sticking to his fingers, his legs, and his belly scales, making him look like a completely red Clubba. The panels in front of them were flashing with warnings and alerts, and the ship was making a heavy left turn, so that if Tubba looked to the left, he was looking straight at the Mushroom World, which was rapidly growing as they fell toward it. "Get the co-pilot!" Blizzerd shouted, his young voice shrill on Tubba's internal ears. "Get him to fix it!" "But I..." Gonzales turned, only to see the co-pilot dash beyond Clubbette, Dibby and GB blockading the entrance and race out into the crowd of Beans. Tubba raced after him, but when he reached the battlers holding the cockpit as a safe zone, he could no longer see the bean. Acutely aware of Gonzales shoving what remained of Beanum's body out into the hallway beyond Clubbette, Dibby and GB, Tubba turned back to the cockpit, fury pumping through him. Tubba roared in anger and disbelief. "We lost him?!" He added a swear for good measure. The ship was nearly ninety degrees to the left, with Tubba's feet, already slick with the blood of Beanum, slipping toward the window on the left. A bang rocked the ship, tilting it even further to the left. Gonzales grabbed one of the pilot's chairs, hanging on for dear life, GB's tentacles kept him in place, but both Clubbette and Tubba tumbled head over heels to the window below them. Tubba managed to catch a glimpse of Dibby and Blizzerd, hovering above them, desperately making a race to grab them before they fell onto the window, cracked it, and died in the unforgiving vacuum of space. Tubba felt himself being suspended in the air by his left leg, his hair an inch from brushing the glass pane of the window below them. "Do they not know we're in control of the ship, now?!" Tubba snarled at no one in particular. Beside him, Clubbette was also suspended in midair. Straining, Tubba saw that Blizzerd had grabbed ahold of his left leg with his large mouth, and that Dibby was holding the heavy Clubbette with both her hands. "Well, looks like you finally found a use for that mouth, Blizzerd!" Tubba joked, despite the tension of the situation. Blizzerd's eyes flashed good-humouredly, but Tubba knew Blizzerd couldn't respond for fear of dropping him. Dibby cried in strain, pulling Clubbette desperately. "I can't hold on!" Before Dibby could let go, however, yet another shot rocked the ship, thrusting it even further to the weakened left side. However, since they were already hovering at ninety degrees, the other shot actually helped them righten themselves, albeit upside-down. Tubba and Clubbette fell from the grasps of their respective saviours, thudding with a bang on the roof of the ship, which was serving as the floor. Gonzales took advantage of the situation to pull himself into the pilot's chair, his orange hair dangling toward the roof below. In the few seconds it took Tubba and Clubbette to regain their feet, standing on the roof, Gonzales had scanned the panels and shouted, "Tubba! I know what's wrong!" "Well?" Tubba responded, looking up at his friend. "What is it?" "Well, aside from all the other warnings from various levels of the ship... the big issue is that all our engines have failed and we're pretty much falling toward the Mushroom World!" Gonzales reeled off as yet another shot from the Koopa Kingdom hit the aircraft, this one impacting the lower levels. But this actually helped Gonzales, who was desperately pulling the yoke one way or another, righten the ship. "Can SOMEONE get information to the Koopa Ship to STOP FIRING?!" Tubba snapped, anger making his voice short and loud. Dibby snorted. "Good luck with that! They're in the same mould as Bowser: no brains, just keep firing." "We should buckle ourselves in!" Clubbette ordered, and Tubba, cursing that once again Clubbette had shown him up, obeyed her orders, settling into the co-pilot seat beside Gonzales. Two more seats were in the cockpit, slightly behind the two pilots' chairs, which were promptly occupied by GB and Clubbette. The Mushroom World was rapidly looming up before them, the cirrus clouds of the upper atmosphere only a few feet below them. "Looks like we're aboard for the ride!" Blizzerd cried behind Tubba, who was looking over all the various panels to find something to restart an engine or two. Or three. Or four. From what Tubba could tell, the ship had six engines, all of which were dead. "Well, all the Toads and Beans that haven't been thrown out of the ship through the various gaping holes in the hull have evacuated," huffed Dibby, floating in the air between Tubba and Gonzales. "Dibby, sit down!" Tubba ordered the Ghost Shy Guy, "we're definitely going to crash!" "There are no more seats. Besides, I'm dead. What could harm me?" Dibby dismissed his concerns with a wave of her tail, and then added, "while Boo Guys and Boos can die a second death, nothing in a crashing ship could harm me." In front of the window, the ship had begun to fall through the clouds, plummeting rapidly toward the ground. The blue of the sky was quite glaring compared to the dark black of deep space, hurting Tubba's eyes, so he looked down at the panels below him. Tubba's eyes were once again drawn by the engine panels, three of which were showing three red X's. Gonzales, pulling the yoke desperately upwards, exclaimed the obvious, "we're going way too fast! Everyone living would be crushed if we hit the ground now!" "We have to restart an engine." Tubba realized grimly. "Leave that to me!" Before any of the battlers aboard the deck could stop her, Dibby poofed through the floor of the rapidly falling aircraft in the direction of the engines, below the ship. Feeling very sick, Tubba began trying to pull the yoke desperately upwards, as Gonzales was doing. Try as Tubba and Gonzales might, they could not get a way for any engine to restart. Five minutes passed of just outright falling, with the yokes in front of them as useless as a gaming console would be in the scenario they were in. It was only when land below them came into view, land that they would impact in less than sixty seconds, that Dibby resurfaced from where she was in the engines. "Try three of the engines now!" Dibby said, with a grin defying all common sense about the situation, moving the mask on her head. Punching three of what they thought were the engine start buttons, Gonzales and Tubba were shocked to see that all three of the engines they had tried restarted, lessening their unstoppable descent. "How'd you do that?" Clubbette's shocked voice exclaimed as both Tubba and Gonzales pulled up desperately with their yokes. Before Dibby could say anything, Tubba remarked: "I suggest you save the explaining for later. Gonzales and I still have no control." But they were out of time. Although Dibby's efforts with the engine had delayed their excursion with the land, and gave them a speed they might be able to survive at, less than one hundred seconds later, the ship closed in on the mountains of a Kingdom Tubba didn't recognize. Releasing his hands from the yoke and closing his eyes, Tubba felt the first blow as the belly of the ship contacted the mountainous ground below.